NYTimes Charles Blow Opinion

[David Lockmiller]

(08-27-2023 04:20 AM)Steve Wrote:  Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” tells a different story, detailing how Columbus described the Arawak in his log at the time. “They would make fine servants,” Columbus wrote. “With 50 men, we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

As Columbus put it in one of his letters, “As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force.”

According to Zinn’s history, on Columbus’s second trip, he set up headquarters in what would become Haiti, “taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor,” and in 1495 he and his crew went on a great slave raid, rounding up 1,500 men, women and children. They loaded 500 on ships back to Spain, but 200 died en route.

When the Arawaks tried to fight back, they were overwhelmed by the Spaniards’ weapons. Those captured were hanged or burned. That’s when the mass suicides of the Arawaks began. As Zinn writes: “Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.”

Dave added the following source information on Columbus: "For a viewpoint on Columbus other than Zinn's, see "Columbus" by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Oxford University Press 1992."

Thank you both for the information on Columbus. I tend to focus my studies on President Lincoln and the Civil War. I shall learn more about Columbus.